


in the rumble where you lay

by 4horsesatetheworld



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Guns, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Season/Series 01, Season 3 rewrite, Sort Of, Suicidal Thoughts, also frank is there, but it's soft by the end, dinah and karen are friends and you can fight me, for both dd season 3 and punisher season 2, karen just doesn't care about herself sometimes, karen kills fisk when she goes to his appartment, of the punisher, some other make appearences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 11:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21474958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4horsesatetheworld/pseuds/4horsesatetheworld
Summary: Karen killed Wilson Fisk tonight. This is what happens after.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 7
Kudos: 87





	in the rumble where you lay

“Jesus, Page, neither you nor our mutual friend go after small fish, do you?” Dinah Midani asks, as she enters the interview room, “Both of you, it’s always go big or go home, isn’t it?”

“Where would be the fun in that?” Karen laughs, “‘Sides, not like you have much ground to stand on.”

“True. It’s why we have such a similar taste in friends.” She sits. “Our mutual friend called me and asked me to pull some strings to get you out of this.”

“Can you?”

“Nope. And he’s pissed to all holy hell. Couldn’t you have gotten at least a little hospitalized? They’re much easier to break out of.”

“Go big or go home, Midani. If I let him beat me anymore, you’d be visiting me in the morgue.” Karen pulled the neck of her shirt down, revealing the hand-shaped bruises curling around her neck. 

“He’s going to lose his shit when he sees that.”

“What is he going to do? Kill Fisk, again?” 

They both smirk at that which devolves into laughter. Karen feels a little unhinged, and she’s not quite sure that Midani is exactly the sanest person to be talking about this with, but men in trenches or something like that. Karen still has Fisk’s blood on her hands and in her hair. There may be some on her face as well. She looks like a murderer. 

“Will you ….” She begins with knowing where the sentence is meant to be going. She goes on anyways, “Will you tell him not to come get me? This is… I have to let this play out. I can’t run and hide.” Not again, she thinks. “Ghosting this, it’s not an option.” 

Midani nods, and asks “You sure? Even if it goes bad.”

“Let me get back to you about that, but we have time before it’s bad enough to run.”

“Sure. Gets harder to get out cleanly though.” 

Karen sighs; the manic energy that had gotten her through all of what had happened this night is finally leaving her. Her bones feel heavy, and she’s so tired. Midani’s phone buzzes. 

“I have to go. Don’t do anything stupid, Page.” Midani bangs on the door. Karen stops her. 

“Thanks for coming, Dinah.” 

“Sure thing, Karen.” They nod at each before Karen is left in the interview room alone again. Well, Wesley and Wilson are staring at her from the mirrored glass, but they’re not really here. She doesn’t want to talk to them right now. 

Foggy, on the other hand, she does want to talk to, and he is her next visitor. He showed up, bursting into the apartment with two FBI agents, only moments after Fisk’s heart had stopped beating. Her hairpin was bloody in her blood-red hands. They’re debriefing about her case; Foggy wants to go down the self-defense route, but they know the prosecution will point out everything that made it premeditated. At this point, Karen doesn't know who's right. They end up talking in circles. She doesn’t want to tell him the full truth. Not yet, at least. She doesn’t know if she knows the full truth even. When Foggy finally goes home to sleep, Karen is handed off to uniforms who let her wash off and change before she’s placed in a cell. She wonders if it’s the same one she was in last time. She can’t sleep, but once she’s horizontal, she can’t find the energy to get off the cot either. 

This is it. This is the end. Unless she lets Frank break her out, all of her will be dissected, dragged out in court and maybe in the papers for everyone to see. No more Karen Page, polite but aggressive secretary-turned-reporter. It will just be Karen and all her sins. 

Was she always this person? This woman with skin full of secrets, a soft heart, and bloody biting teeth, was that always going to be Karen’s final form? It feels like this cot, this moment, this breath in and out of her lungs was where Karen was destined to end up. All the walls of personhood - the pencil skirts, heels, make-up, the laughter and tears – are tumbling down around her. Each beat of her heart sounds like a sledge hammer on the idol she made of herself. She’s always been a killer in a soft suit, and she used Matt, Foggy, the Bulletin, and everyone else to convince herself otherwise. 

She can’t help but think of Frank, wonder if he felt this way, lying in a hospital bed and getting the worst news of his life. Did he feel so empty yet also full, like the eye of a hurricane? She can’t but think of him in terms of natural disasters, inevitable. 

That’s what the city does. It makes everything so inevitable. The grid system, all straight lines and straight destiny in the concrete grey morality that everyone develops in New York City. 

Karen killed a man today, and she’s doesn’t feel bad about it. Wilson Fisk was a bad man, and he deserved to die. She keeps telling herself that and it keeps the big, white-suited ghost out of her eye line. 

Brett interrupts her train of thought. 

“Hey, Karen, are you awake? You got a visitor.”

“Whoever it is can wait until tomorrow. Tell them I’m asleep.” 

“It’s your friend in red. Can’t exactly come her in the daylight.” 

“Oh. Tell him I’m asleep. He can visit with everyone else tomorrow if he wants.”

“You want me to tell Daredevil to leave?”

“Yeah, I don’t want to talk to any self-righteous, lying vigilantes right now. I hear the Devil is kind of a dick.” Karen knows that she sounds kind of like a whiny teenager right now, but a vindictive part of her hopes Matt is listening. Brett puts his hands up. 

“You and Nelson are going to single-handedly give me gray hair before I’m thirty-five,” he mutters, as he walks away. Once he’s left, the room returns to its previous darkness. She counts her breaths and settles into an uneasy sleep. She dreams she’s in room. There’s a table with four people sitting around it. One of them is her, but she cannot recognize her own hands. Wesley and Fisk are laughing. A phone rings. She picks up the gun and shoots them both. One thought and two kills, each bullet making its home in their skulls. She turns to the third person. He tells her she has terrible form and stands. His legs are long, but so are hers, and they are both wearing heavy boots that echo, as he walks her over to a mirror. She pulls the gun up and sees herself in the mirror. The skull burns through the tac vest and into her heart. Her neck is still bruised, but she has a gun in her hands, and she can’t feel the pain. Frank touches her shoulder, her hip, gently correcting her stance. He looks softer in a navy henly and jeans, but his hands feel like marble, cold and firm. She pulls the trigger, and the mirror bleeds, and she can’t breathe. 

Karen Page wakes up gasping. But there are no ghosts in the florescent lights of day. 

Matt doesn’t visit that day, but Marci does. She’s joining Foggy on Karen’s case, and manages to get someone to agree to release Karen to house arrest. When they get there, it doesn’t feel quite like her apartment anymore. It feels like she’s been released into an alternate version of her life. There’s nothing about her apartment that says Murderer, but she feels like she drags the label around with her. Like smoke, she senses it filling up the space. Foggy and Marci decline her knee-jerk reaction to offer refreshment, saying they have to get back to the office, and so it’s Karen alone again (ignoring the police officers outside her doors). 

She moves the white roses to her windowsill. She makes coffee and sits at her computer. She types it all up. Everything she can think of, all her feelings and thoughts. She sends one copy to Foggy. Shines up, changes the wording to bits, removes bits, and sends a copy to Ellison. An exclusive from the killer of the Kingpin, hopefully Ellison will put it behind the paywall, actually make the paper some money this time. She keeps working on some of the other back-burner pieces because she can’t think of what else to do. It’s nice to have goals. 

Frank calls as the hour approaches midnight. 

“Never back down do you, ma’am?” The gravel of his voice comes across the line clear. He continues, “You should have called. Let me kill him. It’d be easier.” 

“Well, Frank, some things a girl has to do for herself. I’ll let you handle the next one.”

“Oh, already planning ahead?”

“Neither of us are any good at keeping our heads down. We’re going to get wrapped in something at some point, and we’ll end up back here.”

“If you go noodling for catfish, you can’t be surprised when one of them bites your arm.”

Karen laughs, “What?”

“When you fish for catfish, you gotta stuck your arm into their holes. They try and eat your arm and you pull ‘em out like you’ve gotten your hand stuck in an angry, wet pickles jar.” 

Karen laughs again. She feels lighter now. “You’ll have to show me sometime.” 

“You’re a little pristine for noodling ma’am. Can’t catch catfish in those heels you like so much.” 

“We both know I’m more than willing to get my hands dirty. ‘Sides, if this trial goes sideways, you and I gotta have something to do while we lay low in Tennessee.”

“Asking me to run away with you, Page? To fucking Tennessee?” 

“I’ve never been.” A police siren goes by, and she can hear it through the phone. “You could come over if you wanted.” 

“Not sure the police outside your door would okay with the Punisher stopping by to say hello.” 

“You’ve taken the fire escape before.” 

Frank is quiet for a beat or two. “Red’s lurking on your roof, and I don’t wanna talk to the altar boy tonight.” 

“Ten bucks says that he’ll try to blame this partially on you. That you brought this darkness into my life.”

“I may be a jarhead, but I’m not stupid enough to take a bet I know I’ll lose.” 

Karen smiles and leans against her window. She scans the roof across the street, hoping to maybe see him, hopes he can see her. 

“I’ve missed you Frank.” 

“Karen, I – “ 

“I’m allowed to miss you Frank. Don’t go saying any bullshit.” 

“I was going to say that I’ve missed you too.”

“Why does it take gangsters and terrorists and kingpins for us to hang out?”

“Oh, this is hanging out, is it?”

“It could be. If you told Matt to just fuck off. Also, that’s not an answer.”

“I dunno. Curt was busting my balls about it the other day.” 

“We should get coffee once this all blows over and there isn’t threat on my life.”

“With the things you write, there’s never not a looming threat.”

Karen hums. He’s right. She tends towards the pieces that make dangerous people angry. She’s been held hostage twice in the past year. What even is her life at this point beside a smattering of words on paper and a mountain of trauma that she really should go to therapy for? What’s that even worth? 

“It’s good,” Franks says, drawing her out of her thoughts, “The stuff you write. It’s good. It’s good that you write it. Makes the city a little brighter, little cleaner.” He coughs, clears his throat. “Sometimes, I wake up, and I’m ready for war. I’m ready to go back to the shitty bolt hole that David and I had, and I wanna pick up my guns again until every scumbag is dead. I wake up, and I want to hurt people. I don’t though. I read your pieces instead. Shit, Karen, you write like you’re going to war. Your writing, what you say changes things. Part of what I do, did, it’s about being willing to do violence unto other. But you …. You don’t do violence, and shit changes more than anything Red or I could do.” He takes a big breath, clears his throat again. 

“Sometimes a man just needs killing. I, sure as shit, ain’t one to judge you.”

Karen lets out a rattling breath. She doesn’t want to cry. If she starts, she might not stop. 

“Sometimes, sometimes,” she says, “sometimes, I could use a fucking hug.” She takes another shaky breath; she feels like she’s walking on a tightrope with only Tartarus below. “Remember when I asked you, where does it end? Where does it end? Why does this city take and take and take from people? From me. I’m fucking tired and lonely. I can’t sleep through the nights without nightmares. I carry a gun, but sometimes I feel like I am the gun. I am the entire war, and there are enemies all around me. There’s too much pain in this world, and I’m tired.”

“But you’re still all heart,” Frank replies, and it comes across the phone and in her apartment. Because he’s here in her apartment. She drops her phone, and he wraps her up in a hug. They’re almost the same height but she still feels small in his arms. She wraps her arms around him and buries her head into his head. Focusing on the steady beat of his heart and the rhythm of his breaths, she breathes in time with him, inhaling the scent of sweat, cotton, smoke, and just a hint of lavender. When she’s come back from the ledge of her own misery, she releases him. 

“Hi,” she feels suddenly shy with the confrontation of him in her apartment right in front of her. He blushes, and she’s already blushing. 

“Ma’am,” he replies, smiling, and she can’t help but smile too. 

“Thank you.” 

“You know that I’d do anything for you.” 

It’s all so serious and heavy in her apartment. It’s not dark, exactly. It feels like twilight or dawn, the cusp of something new. They’re standing very close together. She pulls him into another hug. She can feel him turn his head, so his face is pressed against her neck like she was against him. She likes it; it feels like they’re burrowing into one another. There’s been a Frank-shaped hole in her heart since he climbed out of that elevator shaft. She may be all heart, but he has part of it. She nestles into the hug. 

“You aren’t a war; you’re just a person. You’re a person, and I – I need you, Karen. So please don’t do anything as stupid as that again. I can’t lose you. I need you to be safe.” She nods into his shoulder. When she walked into Fisk’s apartment, she knew only one of them was walking out. She wasn’t sure which. She’s so glad Frank is here, but for once, she can’t find the right words. Frank pulls back. He tucks a stand of hair behind her ear. His hands are rough and warm. 

“You should go to bed.”

“Will you stay?”

“Whatever you need.” Karen nods at him and retreats to her room. She finds a pair of baggy sweats that used to belong to her brother. He stands in the doorway to her room as she hands them to him. Without the boots on, they are almost exactly at the same eye level. She ducks past him into the bathroom. She stares at her reflection and sees her own baggy tee and sweats. When she gets back, he’s sitting on the edge of her bed. She comes to stand in front of him, forcing him to look up at her. She cups his face in her hands. She can feel the beginnings of stubble of his cheeks and small scars from all of his fights. 

She kisses him. Just briefly. She’s too tired to really use her words or brain. He kisses her back. 

“I need you too.”

In the warm dark of her apartment, it’s enough to be Frank and Karen, two people sleeping.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes it's about the tenderness. 
> 
> if you want me write any more, lmk.


End file.
